Welcome to MONSTERLAND FORUMS! We are a casual and friendly online community of movie fans who like to talk about giant monsters, horror and sci-fi in cinema, on television and on Blu Ray/DVD. There are forums for sports, casual chat and video games as well. For those of you who like making art, writing stories and creating videos, our community includes a forum for these submissions as well. Check out our main index page and other board forums! Anyone is welcome to join our community!

MONSTERLAND FORUMS was created on January 29, 2006 for the purpose of giving fans of giant monster films and other sci-fi/horror movies a friendly online meeting place to discuss all of their favorite films and other things of interest like video gaming and sports.

MONSTERLAND FORUMS has 306 member registrations and over 173,000 posts. This online community is Zetaboards' sixth(6th) most active online community among over 383 similarly categorized message boards.

Spring is here!

Our online community is fairly small but I think it's the best group with which to discuss all the movies we love to watch and also talk about other shared interests! For those of you checking out this message board for the first time give our forums a look: I think you'll like what you see!

GODZILLA(2014), produced by Legendary Pictures and directed by Gareth Edwards, has generated over $521 million in worldwide box office receipts and is currently available on Blu Ray/DVD! A sequel is planned for 2018! Toho also recently announced that it will produce another "Godzilla" film in 2016! Legendary Pictures is planning a "Pacific Rim" sequel film for April, 2017!

While Godzilla justifiably dominates many discussions of giant monsters on internet message boards there is another monster from the Orient that has also enjoyed quite a big screen career as well: Gamera. This monster made its debut in 1965 in a black and white, letterboxed film released theatrically by Daiei Studios, the movie called Giant Monster Gamera.

Like any "origin story" film this movie goes about introducing Gamera to those watching the film. The storyline: a mysterious country(presumably the U.S.S.R.) drops an atomic bomb at the Arctic(near the North Pole) which causes a huge fissure to open in the ice. Awakened by the atomic blast a 150 foot tall turtle erupts out of the ice from a long slumber. The giant turtle immediately destroys an icebreaker/research vessel, then flies south, where it stops long enough to befriend a boy with a pet turtle and then engage the local military tasked with stopping it. Scientists discover that Gamera "feeds" on energy, especially fire, which makes attacking the monster with conventional weapons ineffective. To that end scientists and the military forum and come up with the "Z Plan", by which to lure the giant monster into the enormous, and opened, nose of a rocket, then close the rocket's nose and send the giant fire breathing turtle into outer space, never to menace mankind again.

To save budget this movie was shot in black and white. The aspect ratio of the movie is 2:35.1 widescreen. Giant Monster Gamera was directed by (the late) Noriaki Yuasa. Yuasa has done, IMO, a marvelous job of creating an entertaining kaiju film, in light of the time and budget constraints he always worked under while in Daiei's employment. Yuasa was also greatly fond of children and this no doubt factored into the inclusion of a child(the little boy) into the movie's storyline.Admittedly I found the little boy an annoyance and distraction more than anything but this movie is just serious enough in tone otherwise to keep my attention.

Giant Monster Gamera(1965) was re-released in an "Americanized" version in the U.S.(in 1966) with the title Gammera The Invincible, and with the inclusion of American actors Brian Donlevy and Albert Dekker. Both of these films were released on VHS by Neptune Media back in the late 1990's, these VHS releases stellar, both versions presented uncut, in the original aspect ratio(2:35.1 letterbox), the prints very clean and looking quite good.

There has been no official region 1 DVD release of the original Daiei classic Giant Monster Gamera(1965). There are a lot of cheapie DVDs of the American version(Alpha Video comes to mind) but these do the movie no favor: they're usually grainy looking and have been cropped to a pan and scan format(shaped to fit a standard TV screen). These versions can also be seen on "Mystery Science Theater" re-runs as well.

Giant Monster Gamera(1965) is on Region 2 DVD but this disc is getting harder to find. The entire 60's Gamera films are sold at Amazon Japan as a Region 2 DVD box set which is, not surprisingly, very expensive.

Hopefully this film will be released to quality Region 1 DVD soon.

Anyone here would like to see this film in 2:35.1 widescreen and in English subtitles can PM me for info on an internet vendor I know who sells copies of the R2 discs with "burned" English subtitles, and at $15 plus shipping.

This topic thread is for the discussion of Giant Monster Gamera(1965), its American version and anything else related to these two films. All replies welcome.

The trailer for Gammera The Invincible(1966):

Here's Gamera: The Ultimate Collection, a basic three movie Region 1 DVD set which includes three Americanized versions(in pan and scan) of Giant Monster Gamera(1965), Gamera Vs Barugon(1966), and Gamera Vs Viras(1968). The American titles are called,respectively, "Gammera The Invincible", "War Of The Monsters", and "Destroy All Planets": http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id...&ci_sku=7215088

"The Shrine Of Gamera" is mostly an archival(no longer updated) website but still has loads of great info on Gamera. Here's a brief recap og Giant Monster Gamera at this website: http://www.shrineofgamera.com/gamera.html

This is also great news for the the Misties who have been waiting for the Gamera episodes to be released

By "Misties" are you referring to MST3K fans?

Yes. Shout Factory has the rights to MST3K now since Rhino lost them at the 20th Anniversary. Shout has been trying hard to get episodes released that fans have been screaming for and succeeding where Rhino failed (Godzilla vs. Megalon is a great example) Now that Shout has acquired the Gamera Showa movies, I think it is one step closer for the Misties to get the Gamera episodes on DVD which we have all been clamoring for.

"Well, after searching through the forums, it seems that there is finaly a release date for the Shout!Factory Showa Gamera releases. The first film, being released on May 18th according to Amazon, is said by August Ragone – who provided some liner notes for the Retromedia LD release of yesteryear – to feature “assorted special feature materials, including an 8-page booklet”. On other notes, the hope for a blu-ray release seems slim. August claimed Shout!Factory “wanted to include GAMMERA THE INVINCIBLE as an extra, but regrettably, UCLA made it too difficult to use the Interpositive in their library.” More titles are on the way, but it seems like the early anticipation for the US versions may never come to light with UCLA being pains due to the prices of the film prints (which Kadokawa should own anyway)."

Though it is likely SciFiJapan may have beaten me to the punch, I have taken the liberty of contacting Shout!Factory as to try to get a scoop on this, weather it be an interview with the guy in charge of these disc's production to just getting cover art and full spects.

I like the cover art, especialy the color scheme. Not to mention the useage of the Japanese translation for "daikaiju gamera" in the same font as the Japanese 1 sheet. Very awesome. Maybe I made the right choice to not watch the Showa Gamera films till this came out.

One thing I find interesting about this film is that they keep going back to the fact that Gamera saves Toshio's life (even through out the Showa Series) but yet Gamera was the one who put him in danger. It's like stabbing someone and giving them first aid immediately after.

One thing I find interesting about this film is that they keep going back to the fact that Gamera saves Toshio's life (even through out the Showa Series) but yet Gamera was the one who put him in danger

It could be that the writers for this film could think of no other means by which to establish that Gamera liked children. To this day I wish the whole "children" angle had been left out of these films and I say that with no disrespect to the late Noriaki Yuasa.